


Even Cowgirls Get the Blues

by SpikeDru (Siddall)



Category: Firefly
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-19
Updated: 2013-08-19
Packaged: 2017-12-24 01:13:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,135
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/933368
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Siddall/pseuds/SpikeDru
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Her touch was usually a commodity and her palm had tingled with illicit pleasure at being freely given.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Even Cowgirls Get the Blues

It was the finest outhouse on the stinking moon. The wood was smooth and sand clean, and the red tiled floor gleamed. Nandi's girls clearly took care of it. A couple of flimsy moving images hung on either wall: a restful sunset over a beach and a sweet meadow wavering in a spring breeze. Unlit incense rested on a little ledge to one side, ready to banish any unwelcome smells. The back of the wooden door was hung with silken embroidery scenes and the crystals hanging in the small star-shaped window twinkled with the brash sunlight from outside.

Inara sat and cried.

She was in the good clothes she had worn into town the other night, when Mal had drawn her hand into the crook of his arm and held it there. It had been a pose she was used to: her hand resting lightly over the fine cloth as she allowed a man to think he led her. And she had savoured the feel of his muscles under the wool, the way they had tensed when he unconsciously clenched his hold on her as Rance weighed her up like so much chattel. Her touch was usually a commodity and her palm had tingled with illicit pleasure at being freely given. It would never have even occurred to Mal, she knew, that her being on his arm was breaking every rule in her book and that had made her smile to herself as well. That had been two nights ago, when the worlds still span in their rightful orbits and before she was reduced to sitting in a open-air privy sobbing like a farm girl with her first broken crush.

 

Kaylee had fetched her a fine white scarf from her shuttle and Inara was looking for a mirror so she could pin it in place correctly. Everything had to be correct. To be correct was to show respect to Nandi. The great mirror over the bar had been shattered to smithereens, and the looking glasses in the whores' rooms were either too small or too awkwardly placed for setting a veil. And the house was filled with fluttering silks and hushed voices. Too many people consciously trying to be quiet. Reluctantly, Inara entered Nandi's room. The mirror there was above the settle, and had survived the firefight.

Unlike so much else.

She focussed on the veil. Carefully folding it to find the mid-point of its length, then unfurling it. Two tiny pins on the crown of the head, then another two clipping the sides in place. The pins were made of bonder and meshed the molecules of material and hair together. For a short while, the two would be one. In the mirror the white silk glowed and the reflections darkened. As her hands gently checked the fabric fell correctly, she saw movement in the shadows.

Mal. Confused eyes held hers in the mirror as he stepped up behind her.

'Inara-?'

She focussed on her own suddenly angry eyes. She couldn't look at him. Couldn't look at the reflected pain and hurt. She was pulling at her veil now, all grace fallen away. His hands came up to stop her and she felt the tremble in them race up the material and crawl over her scalp.

'Mal, please. I don't-'

She tried to focus on her own eyes, leaning forward to dab carefully at the make-up, but that brought new reflections into the dark glass. Beyond Mal, lurking between their mirror selves, was the bed. Nandi's bed. Still unmade from the morning, because Nandi had had more pressing matters to deal with. Rumpled silk sheets. An embroidered cover hanging mostly off. Pillows in all the wrong places. The impression of Mal's head. The stale scent of them: sweat and semen and sated arousal.

'Inara?'

His hands were coming up again, to gently take her arms. The hands that stole, lied and killed. The hands that loved and comforted. She could sense his blood aching beneath his fingertips, pulsing in painful tune to his heart. It would be so easy. Turn about and let him hold her. Let him tell those pretty lies with his touch. Let him brush away the rules between them and disregard the complications. She wanted it very much. But not here: not in the room where he had made love to another woman instead of her. A woman who had died because Malcolm Reynolds made her feel safe.

Inara slipped away from him and fled to the outhouse.

 

She finally told them in the shuttle. It was _the_ shuttle now, not hers any more. She had given up all ownership of it when she had told Mal she was leaving him. Them. The lounge and gallery were uncomfortable to her since that day: they were spaces for the crew of _Serenity_ and she was no longer crew. Venturing there, she would see Mal's shoulders tense slightly. He was waiting for her to break her silence. He was waiting for the fallout and recriminations, flinching from the future. From Kaylee's tears and Zoe's frown. From all the domestics and the fact that, in the chaos of the aftermath, he'd end up shouting at his crew as they somehow blamed him for Inara's leaving. Which would just make matters worse for everyone. So instead she asked them all to the shuttle.

They drifted in. Kaylee before time, wiping down her hands on her overalls before sitting cross-legged on the floor and playing with the jewellery. Inara hid her anxiety behind a trained smile, seeing her red earrings dangling incongruously against grease-ingrained skin. Kaylee chattered on, oblivious to everything but the shiny in her hands. Book and Jayne arrived together and on time, as you might expect from a mercenary and a preacher. Jayne always got a skittish look when he was in the shuttle, regarding the fripperies as alien. Zoe was clearly only late because of Wash slapping her behind as she climbed the stairs to the shuttle. It wasn't easy to fit that many into the shuttle. Wash settled into the pilot's chair and spun it to face the rest of the room, Zoe perching on his knee.

'Are we planning another surprise birthday party?' he asked, 'Because I thought the last one went really well. What with the fire and the abandoning ship and Mal nearly dying an' all.'

'Weren't Simon's fault everything went kablooey,' Kaylee muttered, flicking a pendant around on a chain.

'Where is the doc, anyhoo?' Jayne asked. 'We fixing something for the little freak's birthday? Cause she may be gettin' older but she ain't gettin' any saner.'

'The 'doc',' Simon corrected, 'was talking the 'little freak' into coming here.' Simon stood in the doorway, his hair mussed up and his mei mei standing on tiptoe to see over his shoulder.

'Please,' Inara said, standing and gesturing to the free space on the banquette. River dived onto the bed and reached out to take the pendant from Kaylee's hand. Kaylee squealed.

So many people, all crammed in tightly around her. All making noise and continuing random conversations about nothing. The sort of talk used to fill up the emptiness of the space surrounding them. Friendly banter binding them together to stop they flying apart in all that vastness. A handy lie they all agreed to believe for the sake of serenity. As close as it got to family.

She knew Mal would be lurking, eavesdropping just behind the doorway as he always did, waiting for her to break the fragile web.

She was trained for such situations. A companion was a subtle breaker of truths, a negotiator of pleasure and an ambassador of comfort. She would pitch her voice just so, lead the conversation around until her destination became clear, let them come to accept the terms. It was what she was trained for. What she was paid, very well, for. It was her art and her artifice. But watching Kaylee look at Simon whilst play-fighting River, watching Wash and Zoe swinging back and forth on the chair in a casual embrace, and Jayne's eyes apparently searching for the fastest exit, she knew her training was worthless.

'I'm leaving.'

There was confusion. Then they were all looking at her, starting to speak. She was joking. She just meant for a bit. She was _what_ -ing?

'As soon as we get to a core planet - or a planet with good transport routes to the core - I'll be leaving you. All of you.'

This time they were silent.

Jayne broke it first. Rising up till his head brushed the hanging silks, one hand on his bowie knife. 'Jien tah-duh guay! What's that hun dan said this time? Want me to sort him out? Bet if'n he lost a finger or two then-'

Zoe was standing then, striding over to look Jayne in the eye. 'You touch him...'

Inara let the sound of the arguing drift over her for a moment. How many more times would she get to hear this? To marvel, half-horrified, by their insults and their violence?

'Enough. Please. I'm choosing to leave. This was my decision and nothing to do with Captain Reynolds.'

There was a disbelieving silence. She looked around the room, catching the eyes of each of them in turn, willing herself to display certainty and reassurance in hers. They mustn't see any of her doubts, or the cut to her heart that lay behind her decision. Kaylee's eyes were drowning in tears. She was carefully returning all the jewels to their rightful places in their velvet lined boxes.

'How long? I mean, it don't make no sense for you to be leaving, not after-'

'Since we were at the Heart of Gold.'

'And you didn't tell none of us?' Kaylee's tears were trailing over the grease stains on her cheeks now. Inara paused, unwilling to lie but unwilling to tell them the truth.

'I wasn't sure,' she settled on. Still wasn't sure, but that was for her to know.

After a little more grumbling they began to leave, back to whatever she had just disrupted. Zoe pressed her hand against Inara's shoulder as she passed. She hadn't missed that tiny pause, Inara was sure, and had known what that meant. Zoe's first loyalty was to Mal but she probably also knew him the best. She may even have seen him smile with pleasure, in those forgotten days before the war, but Inara doubted it. And Zoe's job, as second in command, was to watch her Captain's back. To spot potential problems and handle them. She would know about the complicated knot binding Inara and Mal, and her hand had contained approval that Inara was cutting away those silken cords.

She stood to tidy the tea things away. Tomorrow, she would start to pack. Folding away the red silks and golden lamps. She might have to leave some things behind, since she had no idea how far she would have to travel on her own. Her back was turned to the door when she heard the familiar intruder. She kept her back to him.

'Well, that went better'n expected.'

'I have no wish to cause them unnecessary pain, or cause problems for you. Did you listen at the door, then?'

'Yep. Hauled myself back a bit and tried to look like I was inspecting the other shuttle when they all came tumblin' back out. Got me a passel of black looks for all your kindness.'

'They aren't fools, Mal.'

'An' I am?'

'No! No, I'm-'

She was the fool. Almost mad enough to throw away what remained of her career over a man who could never love anything. They were skilled in making each other unhappy, and it pained her that all her training had never covered this situation. A Companion loves: they don't fall in love. And she had been falling from the moment she walked aboard the ship. It's not the fall that kills you, it's the sudden stop at the end.

'Inara...'

He had stepped up close. If she turned it would be but a single step to touch him. She could run her hands over the tense curve of his waist, slide round to the spot where his back muscles curved into the valley of his spine. Her fingers would lie easily there, move on down to the nerve clusters in the small of his back and pull him against her. It was but a single step.

'Inara, I'll...we'll... _Serenity_ will take you where you need to go, drop you off proper. Don't like the thought o' you...well...there's a lot of thieves and pirates in the 'verse and you got all them valuables.'

It was but a single step.

Inara kept her back to him.

'Thank you, Captain.'

**Author's Note:**

> Originally published January 2006, set after Objects in Space.


End file.
